How to Play Online Slots

We know how each of you has your favourite online casino games, video slots, bonuses, and other features, which is why online casinos continue to grow in popularity and add more thrilling and immersive games to their portfolios. Whether you’re new to the world of online slots or you just want to understand real money slots better, this is the guide for you. At Canadian Casinos Online, we want our players to have the best online gaming experience, so we’ve put together a few tips on how slots work, what some of the special bonus symbols entail, how to make the most of your free spins, and how to use paylines to your advantage.

You Need to Understand How Online Slots Work and Their Special Features

Do you remember the days of one-arm bandits and land-based casinos? So do we! But, thanks to the exponential growth of the Internet, you can now play a huge range of online slots and video slots right from your armchair. There are a few terms for slots games features that you probably already know about. While different online slots can differ in terms of how many reels they have and the incredible themes, there is a range of elements and bonus features that all the best online slots have in common. Standard features you’re probably already familiar with include:

Coins – Understand how coin sizes work, how much you are betting and how this affects the size of your jackpot

Free spins – Unlock a free spins bonus by getting 3 or more scatter symbols across the reels

Pay tables – Check the paytables before you play so that you can understand the winning combinations

But, to truly understand how slots work to get the most out of your gaming experience, there are a few more things to familiarize yourself with.

Special Symbols and Bonus Symbol Features

With so many incredible real money slots online today, it’s a good idea to get to know some of the special symbols. Game-specific features include a number of elements, all of which are designed to enrich your slots experience, such as:

Tumbling reels

Cascading reels

Sticky Wilds

Expanding Wilds

Wild Symbols

Scatter symbols

Multiplier symbols

Ways to Win

Traditional online slots tend to spin the reels and stop. To make things more exciting, some developers use different animation features like tumbling and cascading reels. With these features, the winning combinations disappear, making room for more symbols. Your turn ends once your screen is filled with non-winning combinations.

Wild symbols are also widely used on online slots games. When a spin gives you a wild symbol, it’s counted as any other symbol in the game, which means your chances of getting a winning payline are increased. Sticky Wilds remain on screen for a number of rounds, giving you greater chances to win, and expanding wilds include fantastic animation across the screen.

Some symbols are more valuable when it comes to winning real money slots. Scatter symbols, for instance, are the highest paying and can lead to bonus rounds, whereas multiplier symbols multiply your winnings by a certain factor and are usually found in bonus rounds.

Bonus Games

Depending on the video slots you choose to play, the nature of the bonus games can differ. Typically, once you hit a particular combination of reels, a bonus game appears and you can play for even more wins. The bonus game is usually activated for a certain period of time, and once the time is up, you will be sent back to the main game.

Free Spins Features

There’s no doubt you have heard about free spins. It’s one of the most common kinds of bonuses at online casinos. But, don’t get confused you can also unlock a free spins bonus on some video slot games. Most of the time you will need to land three or more scatter symbols across the reels in order to unlock the free spins feature. The number of free spins you are awarded depends on the game and the different features within the bonus. Often you can retrigger a free spins bonus while playing the feature giving you even more free spins to enjoy. Another great bonus is that wins are often multiplied making this one of the best bonuses to unlock.

Gamble Option in Slot Games

If you’ve ever played real money slots, you’ll probably have come across the gamble option. This is a bonus feature that used to be included in the old-fashioned fruit slots. Today, it’s a bonus game that lets you bet your winnings, or double your winnings, or even lose it all, just by playing a bonus round.

Know Your Coin Sizes and Limits

Remember how you’d visit a one-arm bandit, slip in the coin, and pull the arm? The coin concept still exists for video slots, adding to the tradition of slot machines, and staying true to the classic machines. Using coins on online slots is the perfect way to keep track of your funds and the coins are often designed to represent monetary values. So, you can select the amount of CAD you want to bet at the start of each spin. This is really helpful when you want to be diligent with the amount of money you are spending. We endorse responsible gambling and urge you to only play with cash that you have to spare on gambling.

Use Paylines to Your Advantage

Paylines can be daunting, but understanding them is crucial to your online slots gaming experience. Online paylines do not always adhere to the traditional slots structure which typically has just one payline. Rather, online slots are a row of the grid that you can choose where matching symbols lead to a win. Depending on a number of reels on the slots machine you’re playing on, you may be able to select more than one payline or place an individual bet on each row.

What is a Progressive Jackpot Slot?

While many slots games have fixed jackpots, there are plenty that uses a payout system called a progressive jackpot. What this means is that each time a player plays the game or places a bet, the jackpot increased, instead of remaining static. While your online slots game may have recently paid out a player, the jackpot will go back to a minimum amount and then continue growing once more. Progressive jackpots have become life-changing and all the best online slots that we rate and review offer the chance to win big.

Now that you have a better understanding of how to navigate online slots, check out our reviews and ratings for the best slots on the Internet.